Harvey Weinstein was rocking on his heels, a crumpled Oscar speech hanging from his tuxedo-pants pocket, his golden statuette placed on the stage floor like a cumbersome suitcase. The hulking studio head loomed behind his producers as they spoke, before he elbowed Ed Zwick out of the way to grab the microphone. At long last, the boorish New Yorker was basking in the recognition of the Hollywood establishment.

It was March 21, 1999, the night Shakespeare in Love won the Academy Award for best picture, an honor many thought rightfully belonged to its stiffest competitor, Steven Spielberg’s $70 million World War II drama, Saving Private Ryan. That Weinstein’s film was in the hunt at all against such finely calibrated Oscar bait was proof that his signature innovation—bringing the rough-and-tumble style of political campaigns to the staid and clubby Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—could work. That his talky little Shakespearean romance won against the pricey studio war epic changed the awards forever. We know now that those memorable 1999 Oscars hid a darker story, one most of the world learned of this fall as more than 79 women (as of press time) came forward accusing Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Long a pet topic of Oscar obsessives and industry insiders, it is impossible to revisit the 1999 Oscars and not see the campaign now as Weinstein’s bully masterpiece.

“The movie is still great,” said Mark Gill, Miramax’s L.A. president at the time of the Shakespeare in Love win. “The individual achievements are still remarkable, but you can’t possibly look at it through the same lens anymore. You just can’t.”

BY FRANK TRAPPER/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES.

Take Paltrow’s involvement alone. In an October New York Times story that furthered the deluge of accusations against Weinstein, Paltrow said that when she was 22, she reported for a meeting with the producer at the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel to discuss her first starring role, in his 1996 film Emma. During the meeting, Paltrow alleged, Weinstein put his hands on her and suggested they head to his bedroom for a massage, which Paltrow declined. Four years later, the actress would be holding the best-actress Oscar she won that March night and thanking “Harvey Weinstein and everybody at Miramax Films for their undying support of me.”

In Shakespeare in Love, director John Madden told the fictional tale of the Bard of Avon, who, while struggling to write what would become Romeo and Juliet, falls in love with Viola de Lesseps, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Paltrow, making the fifth of nine films she shot for Weinstein, played Viola; Joseph Fiennes was Shakespeare; Judi Dench played Queen Elizabeth. In the late 1990s, Weinstein was at the height of his power in Hollywood, but during the smooth, $25 million production of Shakespeare in Love, supervised by Miramax production chief Meryl Poster and producer Donna Gigliotti, he had little cause to wield it. Madden re-shot one key scene, of Viola tearfully saying good-bye to Shakespeare at the end of the film. The studio wanted a version where Paltrow’s character appeared more empowered than devastated, a conclusion that would leave the audience hopeful. Given what we now know about Weinstein’s alleged treatment of his leading lady, the tonal change in Paltrow’s performance from wounded to strong feels cheapened, said two former Miramax executives who worked on the film.

Once tweaked, the movie tested off the charts with general audiences and won over the industry crowd at its New York premiere. A limited-release opening weekend in eight theaters brought in $224,012, a respectable showing that suggested a robust box-office future. Still, Weinstein needed to win over one key crowd. At the Los Angeles premiere, at the prestigious Academy theater, the film’s reception was more muted. Weinstein was concerned and, mid-screening, demanded an explanation from a colleague at the event. “I told him, ‘These people are rooting against you to succeed, not for you to succeed,’” the associate said.

Paltrow, Weinstein, and Minnie Driver after the 1999 ceremony.

By Dafydd Jones.

Weinstein’s challenge was to win over skeptical Academy members. To do so, he turned on the marketing engine that had helped him nab the best-picture statuette for The English Patient and nominations for both Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game. Only this time Weinstein was going up against Hollywood royalty in Spielberg, no-nonsense marketer Terry Press, then at DreamWorks, and a film that had been the front-runner since July. By the time Shakespeare in Love opened in limited release, on December 11, 1998, Saving Private Ryan had been in theaters for nearly five months and was well on its way to making $481.8 million worldwide.

“We hadn’t yet had the situation where the grubby little people from New York dared to threaten the kings of Hollywood,” said Gill, describing Miramax’s method of campaigning as hand-to-hand combat in the form of screenings, parties, and nonstop publicity. “We used to joke that working at Miramax was like working at a tiny labor camp with a nice lobby.”

Weinstein strong-armed the movie’s talent into participating in an unprecedented blitzkrieg of press. “It all began with Harvey,” said one publicist with a client in the film. “I don’t remember ever feeling pressure like that from other studios. He was like, ‘Can you do these radio call-ins all morning?’ He calls the clients directly and guilts them. He really was kind of a beast.” Gill confirmed the studio’s reliance on relatively cheap publicity. “This was not saying to the stars, ‘O.K., you can go on a couple of talk shows to open the movie and do a weekend of interviews at a junket and thanks so much for helping,’” Gill said. “That was just ‘Good morning. You’ve got three more months of shaking hands and kissing babies in you.’”

“It all began with Harvey. . . . I don’t remember ever feeling
pressure like that from other studios.”

Weinstein ticked off Academy brass by paying for a “Welcome to America” party for Madden, who is British, at Elaine’s, in New York, and inviting Academy members, appearing to violate a 1997 Academy rule that deemed such receptions improper. He also deployed numerous consultants to lobby the members, and started negative whisper campaigns.

“They tried to get everybody to believe that Saving Private Ryan was all in the first 15 minutes,” said Press. “I said [to Steven Spielberg], ‘Listen, this is what’s going on.’ Steven said to me, ‘I do not want you to get down in the mud with Harvey.’”

Weinstein played into the inherent narcissism of the Academy—its love of seeing actors and writers like themselves as heroic characters on-screen—and he pushed the novelty of the film. “As a literate love story posing what might have been the inspiration for Shakespeare’s first theatrical hit, it made its mark instantly with many of us,” said Tony Angellotti, an Academy member and publicist whom Weinstein hired as a consultant on the film. “It was also, at its heart, about the creative process, and, taking that a step further, analogous to the filmmaking process.”

Scenes from Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love.

Both from Everett Collection.

In addition to Weinstein’s barnstorming strategies, Shakespeare in Love benefited from a quirk of technology, the addition of screeners on VHS tape that allowed Academy members to watch contenders in the comfort of their homes.

With timing, technology, and Weinstein’s brazenness on its side, Shakespeare in Love ended the 71st Academy Awards with seven Oscars, including those for best picture and best actress for Paltrow; Saving Private Ryan won five, including that for best director for Spielberg. When Weinstein took the stage that night to accept the best-picture prize, it was an unorthodox move for a studio chief, and one that rankled some Academy members in its audacity. He delivered a speech thanking a roster of collaborators, including his brother, Bob, “my partner and best friend every day.”

Despite the conventional pushback, Miramax’s Shakespeare campaign became a model going forward. “The whole apparatus for campaigning became a cottage industry,” Press said. “Harvey gave birth to it. It was this blanket commitment of resources. It was the first time, at least for me, that negative campaigning and trash-talking somebody else’s movie became de rigueur.”

Gill confirmed that the negative-speak was part of Weinstein’s plan, and doesn’t apologize for it. “Did it sway the voters? Maybe, but there’s no question that it was done and it may have made the difference,” Gill said.

Nearly 20 years later, Bob Weinstein would advocate for Harvey’s firing from the company the two had built together, and the Academy would break with its long-standing tradition of ignoring members’ private behavior. Among the vocal Academy members who took a stance demanding that Weinstein be expelled from the industry group was Press, now the CBS Films president, who in a Facebook post threatened to quit if Weinstein stayed. Within days, the Academy, whose approval Weinstein had devoted his professional life to earning, issued a statement announcing that the disgraced executive would be expelled. “The era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over,” it read.